Written and Edited By: MarkEAW

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

VOLUNTEER PROGRAMMER NEEDED | MAJOR UPDATES | SOURCE CODE

The EAW community is in need of Volunteers to code new updates for this Windows 95 designed game. Too distribute fixed eaw.exe's etc.

There is no programmers available to update the code to issue hardware repairs to the game at this time. Not many of the current EAW source code users have looked for new programmers, so everyone else is. A few of the past old timer EAW users have tried to find someone in the past , but no luck in the end. So I thought I'd re-mention it here.

If anyone is really willing and capable of doing the updates below, let us know.

These are the major things that need to be improved to keep EAW compatible in native mode running on modern WindowsOS.

• An updated DirectX version is preferred to go from DX5/6 to maybe at least 9.0c/9_1 so modern drivers and hardware can be taken advantage of by the game. So filters set in the GPU's video control panel settings will all work properly.
  
  
• There is no Horizon Fog (Table Fog) in D3D when using NVidia Cards.
  
  
• Low Frames per second in DD/D3D performance in flight, an update to DX in the game will improve these.
  
  
•  Right now the 8-bit in game front end doesn't work correctly (even though the games is a 32 bit executable). It uses the old DirectDraw to display. Its faulty; the menu, map and briefing screens do not have perfect color, and at times are garbled (tearing), sometimes corrupt. (However in Win10 the game looks proper with its compatibility fix applied).
  
  
• Memory management intended for Win95 is CPU intensive (system memory) rather than using GPU memory.
  
  
• Add modern Hardware compatibility, primarily proper full GPU usage.
  
  
• File save EAW error on Windows 10. In particular career saves do not save, since at least 12-2023.
  
  
• See my 'First Use Help Document', there is a section that has a list of other known issues that effect all versions / types of EAW when run natively.
  
  
• See my various other 'Help Documents' for mentioned issues that hamper EAW from working correctly, natively.
  
  
• more??

The original eaw code was lost, and MPS nor Atari at the time did not have it. It was finally obtained fully to the community by about August of 2005. It was pieced together from various original eaw team programmers and archives. Then it was finally made compliable and working before 2006 where a few changes where added, to produce a game ready 1.2x version executable. Its not exactly the same MPS eaw.exe.

The fixed up working source code is in a mixture of "C", "C++" and assembler. You can use Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 (In WinXP) to work on and compile the code. A custom DX6 SDK (although the DX7 SDK should also work) can be used, or use what ever you want. I'd like to see Open Watcom to be used for modern programming, but again, up to you.

There is a bunch of remmed out code in the source, like the cockpit gunflash (that is working in the demo). Most of it seems to be from an earlier game but there's also code for a newer game, possibly Gunship. Incorporated in the code are the various tools MicroProse used, the cockpit editor and the target editors are all there and part of the menu system. Those were also remmed out from the release version. Part of the EAW world editor (.TM and .TTD) is a much more sophisticated 3D system...

The original community provided 1.2x code can be downloaded here: source. I don't pretend to know if it is all there, but I have many other files that may contain other forms of the code I can provide with some guidance from someone that knows.

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